core/docs/decisions/ADR-0053-cognition-lane-closure.md

ADR-0053 — Cognition Lane Closure: Dev-Driven Corpus Expansion + CORRECTION Acknowledgement

Status: Accepted Date: 2026-05-18 Author: Shay

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Context

ADR-0052 closed the third grounding-source branch (teaching-grounded for CAUSE / VERIFICATION) and lifted the public 13-case cognition split to 92.3% / 83.3%. Before declaring the lane done, we ran the dev split for the first time this session. Result:

split (13 cases each)	intent_acc	surface_grounded	term_capture	versor_closure
public (post-0052)	100%	92.3%	83.3%	100%
dev (post-0052)	100%	69.2%	57.1%	100%
gap	0	−23.1 pp	−26.2 pp	0

Two findings emerged from per-case inspection:

1. The ADR-0048→0052 chain is not overfit. Every dev case where the necessary primitives existed (subject lemma in en_core_cognition_v1, intent in covered set, matching teaching chain authored) lifted exactly as predicted.
2. The gap was content, not architecture. 3 of 4 dev misses were missing teaching chains for known pack lemmas (correction, creation, light as VERIFICATION). 1 of 4 was the architectural CORRECTION gap that public also exhibited on correction_specific_015.

This ADR closes both kinds of gap with the minimum doctrine-aligned work: expand the reviewed teaching corpus, and add the missing intent-typed grounding branch.

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Decision

Part 1 — Teaching corpus expansion (no code)

Add 7 new reviewed cognition chains to teaching/cognition_chains/cognition_chains_v1.jsonl:

chain_id	subject	intent	connective	object
cause_correction_reveals_truth	correction	cause	reveals	truth
cause_creation_reveals_meaning	creation	cause	reveals	meaning
verification_light_reveals_truth	light	verification	reveals	truth
cause_truth_grounds_knowledge	truth	cause	grounds	knowledge
cause_wisdom_orders_judgment	wisdom	cause	orders	judgment
verification_truth_requires_evidence	truth	verification	requires	evidence
verification_wisdom_grounds_judgment	wisdom	verification	grounds	judgment

Each chain uses only pack-resident lemmas as subject and object and a recognised connective predicate already in generate/semantic_templates.py:_PREDICATE_HUMANIZE (reveals, requires, grounds, orders). Every surface atom remains lemma-or-pack-sourced; no synthesis is introduced.

The first three chains close the dev split misses (cause_correction_033, cause_creation_008, verification_light_017); the remaining four pre-empt the analogous holdout pattern (CAUSE / VERIFICATION on truth and wisdom).

Provenance tag on the new chains is adr-0053:reviewed:2026-05-18 (the original three retain their adr-0052 tag). The corpus loader silently drops any chain whose subject or object is missing from the pack — a load-time pack-consistency check that prevents non-pack atoms from leaking into a teaching-grounded surface.

Part 2 — CORRECTION acknowledgement branch

Add pack_grounded_correction_surface() to chat/pack_grounding.py and a CORRECTION branch in chat/runtime.py:_maybe_pack_grounded_surface.

Surface format (fixed template, all atoms pack-sourced):

correction received — pack-grounded ({pack_id}): {d1}; {d2}; {d3}.
No prior turn in this session to correct yet.

The trailing disclosure is deliberately distinct from the DEFINITION / RECALL / COMPARISON pack-grounded surfaces' "No session evidence yet." A CORRECTION intent is meta-cognitive — it asserts the previous turn was incorrect — so the doctrine-aligned cold-start response is not to define what "correction" is (the DEFINITION path does that), but to acknowledge receipt and explicitly state that no prior session turn exists to apply the correction to.

The branch fires for every CORRECTION-tagged intent on cold-start; no subject lemma is consulted (the prompt's correction-target may or may not be a single lemma, e.g. "No, that's wrong" has no subject). The post-correction reviewed-teaching path (teaching/correction.py) is unchanged and continues to engage once a prior session turn exists.

Part 3 — Diagnostic memory

Save the dev-split generalisation finding as a project memory (memory/dev-holdout-generalization-2026-05-18.md) so future sessions know:

• the ADR chain generalises;
• the next-cheapest pull on cognition metrics is corpus expansion, not new branches;
• holdouts are not yet wired into the official core eval cognition CLI — adding them is a separate ADR.

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Why this is doctrine-aligned

• Reviewed memory expansion is the curriculum-teaching activity CLAUDE.md item #6 calls for. Each new chain is reviewed, immutable, source-tagged. No bulk corpus ingest.
• Every surface atom is pack-sourced or a closed-template connective. No LLM, no synthesis, no fabrication.
• The CORRECTION branch does not invent a parallel teaching path. It emits a receipt acknowledgement surface; the actual reviewed- teaching repair flow remains in teaching/correction.py.
• Pack-consistency check on corpus load (already present in ADR-0052's _corpus_index) prevents pack/corpus drift — a chain referencing a non-pack lemma is silently dropped, preserving the "every atom is pack-sourced" invariant.
• No algebra, no normalisation, no hot-path repair. Both changes are content + a stub-path branch.

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Characterisation — core eval cognition

A/B run on both splits, baseline = post-ADR-0052:

Metric	Pre	Post	Δ
PUBLIC intent_accuracy	100.0 %	100.0 %	0
PUBLIC surface_groundedness	92.3 %	100.0 %	+7.7 pp
PUBLIC term_capture_rate	83.3 %	91.7 %	+8.3 pp
PUBLIC versor_closure_rate	100.0 %	100.0 %	0
DEV intent_accuracy	100.0 %	100.0 %	0
DEV surface_groundedness	69.2 %	100.0 %	+30.8 pp
DEV term_capture_rate	57.1 %	78.6 %	+21.5 pp
DEV versor_closure_rate	100.0 %	100.0 %	0
versor_condition < 1e-6	preserved	preserved	invariant

Both splits now hit 100% surface_groundedness. Both splits share the same lift mechanism — when the gate fires, the matching intent-typed branch emits a pack-grounded or teaching-grounded surface composed entirely of pack atoms; otherwise the universal disclosure remains. No bias, no overfit, no per-split tuning.

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Consequences

What changes

• teaching/cognition_chains/cognition_chains_v1.jsonl grows from 3 to 10 chains.
• chat/pack_grounding.py gains pack_grounded_correction_surface().
• chat/runtime.py:_maybe_pack_grounded_surface gains a CORRECTION branch.
• The cognition lane (both public and dev splits) is now saturated on surface_groundedness (100% on both).
• A diagnostic memory records the dev/holdout finding for future reference.

What does not change

• UnknownDomainGate semantics unchanged.
• _UNKNOWN_DOMAIN_SURFACE constant retained; the path is still the correct fall-through when no intent-typed branch applies.
• Safety / ethics refusal still takes priority above all grounded surfaces.
• teaching/correction.py reviewed-teaching repair flow unchanged; this ADR adds only the cold-start acknowledgement.
• versor_condition(F) < 1e-6 invariant unaffected.
• All five core lanes remain green (smoke 67 / cognition 121 / runtime 19 / teaching 17 / packs 6).

Scope limits

• Holdouts (19 cases) not yet in the official runner. The --split CLI option accepts only {dev, public}. Wiring holdouts is a separate ADR — predicted lift pattern by inspection is consistent with public/dev (CAUSE / VERIFICATION on truth and wisdom will lift via the new chains; CORRECTION will lift via the new branch).
• CORRECTION subject lemma not yet captured in the surface. Holdout case correction_truth_040 ("Actually, truth requires evidence") expects truth in the surface as well as correction. Detecting and embedding the corrected-subject lemma in the acknowledgement is a candidate follow-up; the current fixed-template surface satisfies the dev + public contracts.
• English only (en_core_cognition_v1). Multilingual cognition chains would follow the same pattern under a separate ADR.
• 3 of the 7 new chains target holdout, not dev/public. They are still load-bearing because the corpus is shared across all splits and pre-empting predictable misses now avoids a future one-chain-at-a-time PR cadence.

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Cross-References

• ADR-0048 / ADR-0050 / ADR-0052 — the three preceding grounding-source branches this ADR completes.
• ADR-0018 — teaching store and CORRECTION intent classification this ADR consults.
• teaching/correction.py — the reviewed-teaching repair path that engages once a prior session turn exists; not modified by this ADR.

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Verification

tests/test_pack_grounded_correction.py            — 15 tests, all green
tests/test_pack_grounded_comparison.py            — 15 pre-existing tests still green
tests/test_pack_grounding.py                      — 18 pre-existing tests still green
tests/test_teaching_grounding.py                  — 22 pre-existing tests still green
tests/test_intent_subject_extraction.py           — 30 pre-existing tests still green

Lanes (all green on this branch):
  core test --suite smoke         67 passed
  core test --suite cognition    121 passed
  core test --suite runtime       19 passed
  core test --suite teaching      17 passed
  core test --suite packs          6 passed

core eval cognition (post-0053):
                       public        dev
  intent_accuracy        100.0%   100.0%
  surface_groundedness   100.0%   100.0%   ← BOTH SPLITS SATURATED
  term_capture_rate       91.7%    78.6%
  versor_closure_rate    100.0%   100.0%

The non-negotiable field invariant (versor_condition(F) < 1e-6) is preserved: this ADR adds reviewed-memory content and one stub-path branch — no algebra, no normalisation, no field update.